


c'mon, with everything falling down around me

by sessrumnir



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, M/M, POV First Person, Pining, Unrequited Love, but like really vulnerable, it's not pretty, ryan has a gf but she's not named so, vulnerable shane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 06:09:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13024893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sessrumnir/pseuds/sessrumnir
Summary: We're not just friends or coworkers. You know me too well for that. We're something more, even though we're not all that we could be.And that's fine, I guess. You have your life. I'm part of it but I can't possibly dream of changing it.





	c'mon, with everything falling down around me

**Author's Note:**

> it's been so long since i've written angst! i miss torturing myself like this. 
> 
> inspired by [this tumblr post](https://rycnbergara.tumblr.com/post/168538169837/hey-idk-if-youve-ever-heard-cmon-by-fun) and patd/fun's beautiful _[c'mon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klHpznbGeYc)_. 
> 
> also, you've awakened the angst monster in me, [MPhoenix7](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MPhoenix7). this is your fault lol

You must know.

There's no way you don't. Not when your smile entrances me like this, making me forget what I was gonna say. Not when your laugh makes me open my chest for all to see the beating heart beneath. It's a small, putrid thing, that barely has any beating left to do; you make it alive, somehow.

You're curious like that.

And when we joke around, it comes so effortlessly, I wonder where you were all those years during highschool, when I had the perspective of a starfish and thought I'd never have something like this. Someone to share my life with, in the most honest sense possible. We're not just friends or coworkers. You know me too well for that. We're something more, even though we're not all that we could be.

And that's fine, I guess. You have your life. I'm part of it but I can't possibly dream of changing it.

I remember now, watching you call her – because she's way better with the GPS in your car, she's better at a lot of things – that we were getting close around the time you two hit it off. It just so happened that we got stuck together and you got yourself a girlfriend at the same time. Remember what you said? That you had never been happier. Fresh out of college, landing your first big job, dating an accquaintance that was everything you had ever dreamed of.

At that time, I agreed. I think I envyed you. You had it all, including the good looks. I was just your fun pal from work. You introduced me to her saying you tolerated me.

I wonder why I never forgot that.

My face must show something, because you're reassuring me that it's fine, we must be close to the exit and she's gonna help us put the address into the goddamn GPS. I'm nodding but pretending to space out, trying my best to not pay attention to your call; it's kinda impossible. You're sitting right next to me. Your voice is my favorite sound in the world.

I'm pathetic.

And you know, I used to accept that. I thought hey, own it, man. Be your most pathetic self and be proud. No one can take that away from you. It probably helped me survive college, but this... This is something else. Feeling like this, watching the way your eyes betray the love you feel for her. It stings. It has for a while now, and I'm still waiting for it to just fucking _stop_. How long does it take for it to go away? How many people do I need to meet to not think of you as soon as I wake up?

I hate it, but I love you too much. How much longer until I just stop functioning around you?

You crack a joke and look at me, expectantly. I didn't even see you hang up, but you did, and is immediately trying to get something out of me. I allow it, because there it is. Your smile. Beautiful, blinding almost. Your stupid, perfect teeth.

That came after. I could see you were kinda hot because you don't grow up with a face like mine and ignore other people's faces. I was well aware you were a hot topic among some of the girls in the office – they never really bothered to hush when I walked in because hey guys, it's just Shane, our adorable weirdo we're never gonna gossip about!

But at first, the only thing that mattered to me was your company. You were my coworker, and then a colleague, and then a friend. It may not have been impressive to you, Mr. Popularity, who had been a hit at fraternity parties only a couple of years before. But I wasn't that popular, and the way you just naturally took up to me was a pleasant surprise. I thought this showing my face and body on the internet regularly wouldn't be that bad, not when I had you to joke around with.

Not when you were by my side, on those shitty first desks we got.

We know how to have fun together. That we do. Looking at the map gives me an excuse to not look at you right now while you drive, the afternoon sun burning your carefully styled hair just the right way for it to look almost out of this world. I snicker, and when you ask what it is, I joke about your sense of direction. You laugh, throwing it back at me. It's easy, and very comfortable, to just banter like this, endlessly. So comfortable I feel my chest tighten with something that I can only call pain. I'm not dying of a heartattack just yet, but it hurts. Somewhere inside. Whatever.

It's not that I now believe in the bullshit that is our bread and butter. I still don't, but it's this kind of constant stinging that makes me think of souls, and that maybe there is something more than just flesh that's bound to rot seven feet under. It feels as if this supposedly soul I have is hurt, constantly bleeding. Being around you hurts but being away seems to worsen things, as if it opens the wound all over again. Right now, next to you, listening to your loud music, in the car you're so proud of, I feel as if I'm just stabbing that so-called soul over and over. It's not healing, and it doesn't seem like it's ever gonna heal. It just hurts. All the time. More with you, even more without you.

I don't mind, because then I see your smile and remember it's worth it. It's so worth it.

We take a couple more hours to finally find the motel we're checking into, close to the theater where they're doing the Horror Classics Night. I talk out of my ass all the way there, to silence my mind – and, sure, whatever, my " _soul_ ". It's getting impossible to avoid the flirty jokes. The last time I called you _baby_ in a throwaway comment – again – you looked me straight in the eye and told me to stop making it weird.

Sure thing, buddy. This is not weird at all. It's all good now. Thank god I don't call you _baby_ anymore, huh.

There's the usual _what if this place is haunted? What if we get murdered in our sleep?_ And I reply with what I usually say at this point, which is: good. A good nice double homicide in a dingy motel just out of town, I joke. You get the chills, looking over your shoulder, and I desperately want to reach over and touch you. Calm you down, say that it's alright, I'm here. There's nothing to be afraid of because I'd rather die than let anything happen to you. But that sounds overdramatic and maybe wouldn't fly with you, so I tease a little more. Oh, stained carpet. Must be dried up blood!

I really do wish I could believe in the things you do, and I've told you that before, but I don't know how much of it you thought was bullshit. But it's true. I wish I could feel things the way you do, so intensely, so openly. You're scared, sure, but you're also not ashamed of it. You don't try to hide anything, and it's this thing of being your most honest self that probably got me so hooked on you. Not that you're a drug, but I probably am addicted to you. To your "soul". Hah.

The thing is, though, I don't know how to be more like that. I had a fairly grim worldview before you, and you may have noticed it because it took me some time to understand that there's good things to look for in this life. Your face all puffed up in the morning being one of them. There's nothing more endearing than you at 8a.m, and I've probably said that with some jokes wrapped around it. But before I knew you, before falling down this rabbit hole, things used to be simpler. More depressing, too. There was just no hope, and yeah, that's sad, but it's how things are. What can we do about it?

But now, man. Now I see you turning on the TV and biting your nails when you see some fucked up shit and I want to _do something_. I want the world to be more fair to you, brighter, happier. I wish I could just tag along forever, screaming away ghosts and anything else you wanted me to. Because in some way, you made me believe that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and that if we could just get there, things might be a little less awful. The world might not be burning under our feet then. Do you realize that? Do you realize you made me believe? Not in ghosts, and I don't think that's ever gonna happen because, c'mon. But in life, in the goodness that might exist somewhere, someday. You taught me hope.

As glad as I am to sleep next to you from time to time in a dirty basement floor, I'm glad we have separate beds now. I don't enjoy sleeping on the same bed, because it's always with the knowledge that you're hating it. That you're doing your best to be as far away as possible from me, avoiding any part of me. The pillows you put between us are a guarantee to you, but to me they're just reminders that you're not with me in this rabbit hole. You're not counting the days to see me again, neither are you excited to be investigating tiny bedrooms with me. You like your job, and you like the show, and I don't think you're pretending to like my friendship – we really do have fun together – but there's a distance. Always a distance. Be it with pillows, or with you just pushing your bedroll another inch away from mine, but there's a divide between us. And if you're not willing to cross that distance, I'm not about to ask you to. Never.

And when we wish each other good night, I see you texting her still, smiling fondly at your phone. It's been years, and you're as much in love as you were in the beginning. That's a sad parallel to draw here, but I understand that. How many years since I first drunk cried over you? How many times after that have I laid awake in bed just making up scenarios that will never happen? I shouldn't be doing this now, either. It's hard to remember the good parts when all you have is your thoughts and the darkness around you, both trying to crush you until you're nothing. It's not fair. It's two against one. I close my eyes.

"Shane?"

Your voice is small, tentative. You don't know if I'm still awake, and you shouldn't, since I have been lying here for a good hour now, mostly unmoving. You wait, and I do my best impression of quiet breathing. I don't want to do this. I don't want to see your face in the dark and lose my sleep again because your voice is still ringing in my ears. I wonder if maybe I'm going insane, but soon you're turning your back to me, giving up, and I try again to just not think about it. You. We.

When I wake up, your bed is empty. I know that right away, because as soon as I open my eyes, I look for you.

Sometimes I feel lucky that we have so much in common – or maybe it's the other way around, and we lucked out in finding each other precisely because we have so much in common. Whatever the case may be, I don't think I'll ever get over movie night with you. Our shared love for popcorn and horror only gets better when I think about everything we'll talk about later, when the movie ends and we're left to comment on it for hours, maybe days afterwards. There is always something. We particularly like slash horror, I think, because of our game in trying to figure out who the killer is first. You win most of the time, and I pretend to be mad, but you know I'm not. You know that. As you must know everything else.

And even if we're tired, and our legs are cramping, and we can't even taste the popcorn anymore, it's still just as perfect. The bags under your eyes are bigger than ever, and I suggest we call it a night about three movies in, but you don't want to go. You look happy. You want to be there, watching stupid horror movies with me, and how can I say no to that? How can I say no to my own selfish wishes to be with you, so close, whispering in each other's ears and snickering when the dialogue on the screen is just too bad to handle. How can I force myself to pull away from you when it's you and your stupid teeth that help me forget the world outside?

It's when we're walking back to the motel, late at night, after hours of gore and violence and the most disgusting movies we could stomach, that you ask me about death. If I'm not scared. If being so skeptical isn't frightening because surely, there must be something on the other side, right? And I can't help but watch you, trying my best not to smile too wide because again, you're feeling so intensely. So raw, and unapologetic. You enjoy your horrors and your ghosts, but you worry about them, too. And you share that with me. And it's at that point that I realize that yeah, I do fear death, and it's not just because I'll cease to exist and never be again. But because I'm afraid to regret the way I lived my life. Regret not doing what I was supposed to do but never quite worked the courage for.

You look at me with curious eyes, mulling it over. I don't say anything else, because from that point on I'm thinking how sad it would be to go and never tell you how much you meant to me. How important you were to someone, and how you're one of the kindest, most beautiful human beings that I have ever known. I know I'm not the only one that thinks that – I know all of our friends would agree, and so would she. But I don't know how to let you know that without spilling what I'm supposed to keep hidden behind all these bones and flesh.

"We're lost," you say, and I look up, confused, terrified that my face has betrayed me somehow. Your eyes twinkle with mischief. "This is not the way to the motel."

It takes us another half an hour to get back, laughing so hard we both need to wipe at our eyes when we reach the door to our room. I'm blaming you for this because for all your qualities, you truly are terrible with directions. And you know it, and you throw your head back laughing, and it's a memory that I hope gets etched in my brain forever. The sound of your breathy laugh, the way you fumble with the GPS on your phone like you're not the tech-savvy geek I know you are, cursing at Siri even though you have disabled Siri months ago.

I love you. I know that, but it's not as if it makes much difference now. I love you and your obsession with flossing your teeth twice before bed; the way you take an extra ten minutes every night to carefully wash the product from your hair; I love your stupid humming to songs that are not supposed to be hummed; I love how when you go to bed, and turn off the bedside lamp, and pick up your phone to wish her goodnight, you wish me goodnight first. It's small, and it doesn't mean anything, but I'm glad you do. I'm glad you remember to say it.

And if I feel like I'm bleeding out when I wake up the next morning and you're sitting on my bed, trying to rouse me from sleep, so close I could touch your face if I wanted to, it's alright. I wish you hadn't taught me about hope, because that's a thing I feel now, and there's a small, almost nonexistent part of me that waits for the day I'll be able to do just that – reach up and touch your face, brush my fingers against the faint stubble on your jaw. Maybe that day will come, maybe it won't. Maybe I'll never know what it feels like to have your arms around me in anything other than in a brusque hug after a handful of shots, but I'm ok with that.

I'm familiar with pain. I'll be alright.

And you must know that, too.

**Author's Note:**

> "when I am ten feet tall  
> I've never felt much smaller since the fall  
> nobody seems to know my name  
> so don't leave me to sleep all alone  
> may we stay lost on our way home?  
> c'mon, c'mon, with everything falling down around me  
> I'd like to believe in all the possibilities"
> 
> — panic! at the disco & fun., c'mon


End file.
